|
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, FRS (6 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman, Lieutenant-Governor of British Java (1811–1815) and Governor-General of Bencoolen (1817–1822), best known for his founding of Singapore. He was also heavily involved in the conquest of the Indonesian island of Java from Dutch and French military forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the expansion of the British Empire. He was also an amateur writer and wrote a book titled ''The History of Java'' (1817). ==Early life== Raffles was born on the ship ''Ann'' off the coast of Port Morant, Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles (d. June 1797) and Anne Raffles (née Lyde). His father was a Yorkshireman who had a burgeoning family and little luck in the West Indies trade during the American Revolution, sending the family into debt. The little money the family had went into schooling Raffles. He attended a boarding school. In 1795, at the age of 14, Raffles started working as a clerk in London for the British East India Company, the trading company that shaped many of Britain's overseas conquests. In 1805 he was sent to what is now Penang in the country of Malaysia, then called the Prince of Wales Island, starting his long association with Southeast Asia. He started with a post under the Honourable Philip Dundas, the Governor of Penang. He was appointed assistant secretary to the new Governor of Penang in 1805 and married Olivia Mariamne Fancourt, a widow who was formerly married to Jacob Cassivelaun Fancourt, an assistant surgeon in Madras who had died in 1800. At this time he also made the acquaintance of Thomas Otho Travers, who would accompany him for the next twenty years. His knowledge of the Malay language as well as his wit and ability, gained him favour with Lord Minto, Governor-General of India, and he was sent to Malacca. Then, in 1811, after the invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of Holland by France during Napoleon's war, Raffles had no choice but to leave the country. He mounted a military expedition against the Dutch and French in Java, Indonesia. The war was swiftly conducted by Admiral Robert Stopford, General Frederick Augustus Wetherall, and Colonel Rollo Gillespie, who led a well-organized army against an army of mostly French conscripts with little proper leadership. The previous Dutch governor, Herman Willem Daendels, had built a well-defended fortification at Meester Cornelis (now Jatinegara), and at the time, the governor, Jan Willem Janssens (who, coincidentally, surrendered to the British at the Cape Colony), mounted a brave but ultimately futile defence at the fortress. The British, led by Colonel Gillespie, stormed the fort and captured it within three hours. Janssens attempted to escape inland but was captured. The British invasion of Java took a total of forty-five days, during which Raffles was appointed the Lieutenant-Governor by Lord Minto before hostilities formally ceased. He took his residence at Buitenzorg and despite having a small subset of Britons as his senior staff, he kept many of the Dutch civil servants in the governmental structure. He also negotiated peace and mounted some significant military expeditions against local princes to subjugate them to British rule. Most significant of these was the 21 June 1812 assault on Yogyakarta, one of the two most powerful indigenous polities in Java. During the attack the Yogyakarta kraton was badly damaged and extensively looted by British troops. Raffles seized much of the contents of the court archive. The event was unprecedented in Javanese history. It was the first time an indigenous court had been taken by storm by a European army, and the humiliation of the local aristocracy was profound.〔Ricklefs, M. C. ''A History of Modern Indonesia Since C. 1200'', 4th Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008〕 Although peace returned to Central Java in the immediate aftermath of the British assault, the events may have fuelled the deep-seated instability and hostility to European involvement that ultimately gave rise to the Java War of the 1820s.〔Carey, Peter, The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855, 2008〕 Raffles also ordered an expedition to Palembang in Sumatra to unseat the local sultan, Mahmud Badaruddin II, and to seize the nearby Bangka Island to set up a permanent British presence in the area in the case of the return of Java to Dutch rule after the end of the War of the Sixth Coalition in Europe. During his lieutenant-governorship, Raffles placed some restrictions on the local slave trade in line with wider British policy across its Asian territories, although slavery remained widespread and Raffles himself was served by a large retinue of slaves at his official residences in Java.〔Hahn, Emily, Raffles of Singapore, 1946〕 Under Raffles's aegis, a large number of ancient monuments in Java were systematically catalogued for the first time. The first detailed English-language account of Prambanan was prepared by Colin Mackenzie while Borobudur was surveyed and cleared of vegetation by H. C. Cornelius.〔Miksic, John, Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas, 1990〕 Raffles also attempted a replacement of the Dutch system of forced agricultural deliveries in kind with a cash-based land tenure system of land management, probably influenced by the earlier writings of Dirk van Hogendorp (1761–1822). Under the harsh conditions of the island, his wife, Olivia, died on 26 November 1814, an event that devastated Raffles. In 1815, he left again for England shortly before the island of Java was returned to control of the Netherlands following the Napoleonic Wars, under the terms of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. Raffles had been removed from his post by the East India Company ahead of the handover and officially replaced by John Fendall on account of the poor financial performance of the colony during his administration and allegations of financial impropriety on his own part. He sailed to England in early 1816 to clear his name and, en route, visited Napoleon, who was in exile at St. Helena, but found him unpleasant and unimpressive. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stamford Raffles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|